Best Strategies For Tackling Microeconomics Homework

I’ve taken two microecon courses in college, and AP Microeconomics in high school, so I know that it can be tough. Once you get a good grip on the subject, though, you’ll suddenly feel like you can open a perfectly competitive business and still make economic profits in the long run. Here are four tactics you can use to gain a monopoly on your microeconomics homework.

Always remember what the purpose of economics is.

This phrase I’m about to type out will haunt you and I in our sleeps for the rest of our lives. When you’re doing hypothetical scenario microeconomics problems, it is up to you to decide how to allocate scarce resources. By thinking hard enough about who in the problem desires or is able to pay the most for their scarce resources, you will always be able to find out how to allocate them. Remember the microeconomic assumption that people will always act rationally and have infinite desires.

When in doubt, graph it out.

Sadly, this phrase has been uttered by my economics teachers as well as my math teachers. If you’re like me, you’re not too absolutely fantastic at visualizing certain things, so graph it out. Supply will always have a positive slope and demand will always have a negative slope unless specified otherwise. Marginal Cost is shaped like the Big Dipper, and Marginal Revenue, well, depends on your market structure. When someone says “increases,” just know that they really mean “shift right.” The same goes for “decreases” and “shift left.”

Know at least three of the four market structures

You’re never really going to have to do anything with the monopolistically competitive graph, so if you’re not majoring in business or planning on owning a coffee shop anytime soon, it isn’t all too important for you to memorize. The other three, perfect competition, oligopoly, and monopoly, are super important to know. Note the one similarity they should all have: the marginal cost curve should look like the Big Dipper. That’s how I memorized it, that’s how I got a 5 on the AP, and you can too.

Keep trying until marginal hope equals marginal hopelessness

That’s the phrase I used to close my high school graduation speech, and it’s honestly true. Microeconomics is one of those courses where you just need to stare until it clicks for you, but don’t worry if marginal hopelessness is much greater than marginal hope is right now. It’ll come sooner than later. You’ll be sound asleep tonight when you’ll have a dream in which the supply curve scurries right as hydraulic fracturing is introduced to the natural gas industry, just you wait.